Couch Night
by xLilly White
Summary: The first few mornings of living together were pretty much like what they'd expected. AnakinPadme.


_(for the Aussie!)_

* * *

. c o u c h . n i g h t .

**x**

The first few mornings were pretty much like what they'd been expecting.

Sometimes he'd wake before her and find her neatly tucked in her side of the bed, and the silken creases dripped down from her body as artfully as if she'd actually set them like that herself for his own voyeur's pleasure. Her bare shoulder would be glowing a soft blue hue, awash in the light from the neons just outside their window. Her hip would bear a sliver of deep blue too, a burn of light atop a dark hill, creases creeping down from it like roots. Then her legs, never sprawled or thrown around in random positions like his, would be neatly placed one on top of the other, painted toes curled inwards, never sticking out from under the covers.  
Her hair would be somewhere where it didn't bother anyone, which was a feat he couldn't even accomplish with his shoulder-length tangle – that he hadn't been able to accomplish when he had no hair but his Padawan braid, damn it. It was always his hair in her mouth when they kissed – hers never even approached their faces, not even when she loomed over him and it hung around them like a sweet-smelling, jewel-encrusted veil - it had to have something to do with a hidden magnetism, or, or something like that. Who knew to what lengths Naboo women went to be irreproachable?

There were four options when he found her like that, unaware and unguarded. The most tempting was to leap on her like a demented screaming sandperson and shatter the infuriating perfection of her, sleeping, not even snoring, not even twitching an ear or a finger.

Or, pull the covers away slowly and wait for the Senator to give him perfectly reasonable arguments as to why he should give it back, given that he had more flesh on him than she did, _and_ he was at least three heads taller. And he also needed an absorbent surface to drool on, unlike her, who managed to sleep with her mouth closed – _all_ the time. (She couldn't be pure-blood human. Honestly.)

Or, put all her hair in her face. Simple and satisfying.

But he mostly chose the fourth option, which was to leave her untouched and undisturbed. It was true that there was nothing _harder _than trying to refrain from touching a woman who is both attractive and deliciously irritable… but he did try, and sometimes succeed.

He'd sit up on the bed, wearing not one stitch of clothing if you didn't count the blue glow that enveloped his skin and somewhat diminished the notion of nudity; white spectres would glide over the hard contours of his torso whenever a vehicle flew too close to their building, but other than that, the stillness could be absolute.

When he ended up sleeping on her side of the bed after their chaotic goodnights, he'd have the privilege of waking next to her bedside table – he knew she hated it when he touched her things (and even worse if he did so _naked_), but he couldn't help contemplating the beaded hairpins and jeweled cuffs and headdresses, the bottles of perfume and powder pots, the brushes and oils and creams … waking up on this side of the bed certainly smelled better than his grease-smelling bedside table where the latest reparation project (or the tools involved) usually lay around in oily black pieces. (Most of the time it was datapads that he crushed during some vital mission he'd had to record – it was handy to be the mechanic type and therefore be able to have a break from excuses.)

He'd pick up one of her exquisite hairpins that she'd kept from the days when she'd been royalty; there was a crooked, lacquered beauty that sent tumbling a thousand golden tresses, each interwoven with creamy pearls of the most luxurious kind. He'd bring it to his nose, handling it as delicately as if it were her own bones, and he'd smell the heady scent of her perfume clinging to each of the lustrous white beads.

She'd been a queen; and he had this being of lofty heritage curled up in his bed, breathing softly, offering him everything freely – every little part of her, physique and intellect… though he had to say he preferred the way shadows would trickle between her ribs when she breathed in, preferred the way her abdominal muscles looked with his hand placed on them whenever she would straddle him, preferred how she would look back at him with a wry expression telling him she'd noticed where his eyes had been – he preferred those very visual moments, those little physical parts of her, rather than the hours spent discussing things and exploring each others' minds. Not that she had an uninteresting mind… it just didn't blow him away as surely as the perfect way her hips would mould his – as surely as a single look from those smoky eyes could – as surely as the way her lips would unstick, humid and voluptuous, making every other detail of reality melt away.

**x**

Sometimes she'd wake before him, and she'd wonder where she was; why was there a warm, solid wall pressed against the length of her back? Why was there an arm thrown over her torso, a hand resting on her hip bone – _oh_. She'd remember, slowly, and her heart would drag itself back up to its natural placement.  
Immediately her nose would wrinkle up and she'd also remember where she'd ended up after last night's rather fierce battle for dominion. She'd lost, hadn't she? Otherwise she'd be on her side of the bed- the one that didn't smell like the churning, still-hot reactor of some grimy podracer.

Oh, she'd lost alright – he'd been rather brutal, and her body wouldn't let her forget it. She would bring a hand up to whatever part of her body that he'd bitten (because he knew she loved it, however much she might complain the next day about having to meet the Senate whilst bearing great big purple marks in all the most inappropriate places), and then she'd sigh and turn over to contemplate the man that was the cause of her losing her reason. Hell, she had a diploma attesting to the brilliance of said reason, and here he was, blatantly making fun of it and the rest of her principles by simply _lying_ there beside her, probably still in the nude and just as disgraceful as any man allowed himself to be when in bed with a trusted female.

She'd lean on one elbow and appreciate how tactful he'd been to orientate his face _away_ from hers; lips parted and throat exposed, he'd always lie on his back with his arms thrown up, forearms thrust beneath the pillow; his chest would always be bare and at the mercy of the neon lights (was this just pure masculine pride? She'd never put herself in such a _conspicuous_ position), and then the covers would come and eat his legs up, only to slip away and leave his long feet bare. The toes would always have a twitching ratio of about three times per minute- the entire legs, thankfully, twitched a bit less often.

She'd sigh, bemused, and sometimes she'd ask herself what she was doing with this… _adolescent_, who might be mightily good looking in the sunlight but whose dignity could be stripped away so easily.

She never even thought about leaving him to his dreams. These were the only moments where she could let him take advantage of her without feeling guilty about her own lust; during the day she was never quite so taken by him as when they were together, alone and in the dark like this. They could talk so much more freely, and she had the feeling they even entered a sort of dimension where they allowed themselves to appreciate the other for their real worth, forgetting their own pride and doing as they pleased without having to worry about any discomforts either from the surroundings or from each other.

Of course, they didn't only talk. Most of the time she preferred it when they didn't talk, actually (had it been daylight, she'd been embarrassed to admit this). It wasn't that she found him uninteresting… it was just that they had so many differences when it came to ideals or morals that sometimes she was just too tired to be tolerant and curious about ideas that she thought were preposterous or a little immature. She had a much easier time, however, accepting their physical differences; him being the battle-hardened warrior and her being the desk-dwelling politician, there was an inevitable asymmetry between their minds and bodies. She'd been on missions, alright, but she'd never had to train in any martial art like he had. So, naturally, she was jealous of his rock-hard legs and the elegant form of his biceps and forearm (organic, obviously) – but the jealousy would quickly be swept away when he'd melt into her, around her, and it seemed every part of his body became a part of hers and there would be a rare and perfect symmetry to their union that only they could ever witness.

The symmetry was long gone by the time either of them woke up, however, and every morning she'd wake and sigh and accept that, too; the ephemeral quality of their union was something she should've cherished rather than scorned, since it was the only thing that proved that there was _something_ complete about them. She just wished he could complete her a little longer, a little better.

She'd lay a hand on his ribs and place a kiss on the underside of his arm that he'd exposed, and if that wasn't enough to stir him she'd reach over and close his jaw playfully, watching how he'd slip out of his slumber with a grumble and a stretch. Then he'd roll over and try to kiss her but she'd catch a whiff of that morning breath and command him to get up and have a drink before he so much as touched her. So he'd roll over in the other direction and slide off the bed, yawning and stretching out his arm – a bottle would come whizzing in the room out of nowhere and he'd catch it, grinning as she huffed indignantly. She hated it when he showed off his superior powers like that. Put the dishes away? Easy peasy. Move the furniture? No problem. Get your stinking pants out from under the bed/the top of the cupboard/the balcony three stories down? Sure thing. And all this from the edge of the bed or the sofa, most of the time while reading something or fiddling around with wires… _ugh._ Fetch that bra of mine that you hurled somewhere last night? That is in no way my problem... _you_ look for it while I sit back and watch! … Maybe she shouldn't have chosen a Jedi to live with. There were lots of _other_ reasons, most of which legal and official, why she shouldn't have chosen a Jedi. But the worst reason had to be the missions, because the mornings where she'd wake and he wasn't there were much more frequent than the mornings that she woke with his back against hers, a very real warmth that would remind her that not all was politics and mindfulness and complex grey – black and white came into being when passion met lust, and they could be savored just as much.

**x**


End file.
